CVE-2023-52978 riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position
A local attacker can cause a kernel panic and system crash by placing a kprobe at an illegal instruction position on RISC-V systems.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-52978?
CVE-2023-52978 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Mar 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position
The kernel would panic when probed for an illegal position. eg:
(CONFIG_RISCV_ISA_C=n)
echo 'p:hello kernel_clone+0x16 a0=%a0' >> kprobe_events echo 1 > events/kprobes/hello/enable cat trace
Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 CPU: 0 PID: 111 Comm: sh Not tainted 6.2.0-rc1-00027-g2d398fe49a4d #490 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) Call Trace: [<ffffffff80007268>] dump_backtrace+0x38/0x48 [<ffffffff80c5e83c>] show_stack+0x50/0x68 [<ffffffff80c6da28>] dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x84 [<ffffffff80c6da6c>] dump_stack+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff80c5ecf4>] panic+0x160/0x374 [<ffffffff80c6db94>] generic_handle_arch_irq+0x0/0xa8 [<ffffffff802deeb0>] sys_newstat+0x0/0x30 [<ffffffff800158c0>] sys_clone+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff800039e8>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x4 ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 ]---
That is because the kprobe's ebreak instruction broke the kernel's original code. The user should guarantee the correction of the probe position, but it couldn't make the kernel panic.
This patch adds arch_check_kprobe in arch_prepare_kprobe to prevent an illegal position (Such as the middle of an instruction).
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52978?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-52978?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2023-52978 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-52978 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-52978, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52978, GHSA-7m9p-x22p-v2hg, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52978.